As someone who has a software patent, you don't want to know what it's like, as an engineer, to see your work get abstracted into generalities for a patent.

By the end of it, everything was so generically described that I couldn't even recognize it anymore. This entire system needs to be reworked or thrown away entirely.

> This entire system needs to be reworked

In my mind patents were made to protect inventors and the little guy so that he/she could capitalize on their invention before the market is unleashed. When multi-billion dollar companies are gaining government sanctioned exclusivity to something through a patent, something seems off.

But in this example they weren't a multi-billion dollar company 20 years ago.

> In my mind patents were made to protect inventors and the little guy so that he/she could capitalize on their invention before the market is unleashed. When multi-billion dollar companies are gaining government sanctioned exclusivity to something through a patent, something seems off.

I agree. Patent laws have created for moral reasons instead of practical ones. Let this be a lesson to lawmakers to pass regulation based on facts instead of feelings.

> When multi-billion dollar companies are gaining government sanctioned exclusivity to something through a patent, something seems off.

So, in your world, why would a medical research lab spend billions researching and developing new drugs, spend years going through regulatory approval and testing, only to have their drug be sold for pennies as a generic?

This comes up as an example a lot. The solution is not to eliminate patents, but just to get rid of a one-size-fits-all patent. Medical patents shouldn't be on the same footing as a software patent. For example, you could maybe ask for a FDA-Approved-Drug-Patent which would be different than new-roller-skates patent.

Software patents may be "strange", but patents are very useful in the rest of the engineering world.

Agreed, years of research and brilliant ideas should be protected. However one click shopping is a bit obvious.

Not to sound condescending but the following phrase

"years of research and brilliant ideas should be protected"

can never adequately define what must be patented and what must not be. An brilliant idea need not take years of research. Even the interpretation of the word brilliant is debatable.

PS: I'm not taking any stance with respect to patents. Just saying that it's not black and white.

Agreed, no issue I know of is black and white. I think the grammar is correct though, or should I have said "years of research OR brilliant ideas"? Would you have preferred "insightful ideas"

Patents are required to be both "novel" (no one has done it before) and "non-obvious" (a typical software engineer wouldn't have thought of it). These seem to cover it pretty well to me, except that novelty is trivial to find in the software world and the bar for obviousness seems to be completely ignored; I've never heard of a software patent so obvious it was rejected.

Agreed. Many things sound obvious in plain English but when you ask someone to write an actual law that everyone will abide by (and will survive committees and constitutionality challenges), it becomes quite a bit more difficult.

I agree about how broken it is. But for a patent attorney, it is gold, if you can extend the idea. If I had more money to defend one back in 2000 I would own mesh networks...

> If I had more money to defend one back in 2000 I would own mesh networks...

Then no one would use mesh networks instead of almost no one!

This is by design. Patent lawyers are paid to obtain the most generic patent possible.

Agreed, it seems quite obvious even if there was no prior art (which I doubt, even in 1997, and security issues aside, sites using PHP or ASP or Perl could have been storing credit card data for express checkout functionality).

I also don't see the huge advantage of this. I never use one-click checkout on Amazon. I like to review everything before I buy.

I guess for totally impulse purchases it helps eliminate a step at which the buyer might reconsider a purchase. But I don't like to shop that way.

>I guess for totally impulse purchases it helps eliminate a step for the buyer to reconsider a purchase.

AFAIK (I only ever used one-click checkout on amazon.co.jp) there's a 15-minute or so window where you can review and modify/cancel your order, so the step is still there (though most people would probably ignore it). I found it convenient to use because domestic shipping was free, and I'm already seeing the price of the product, which is the only thing I'm buying, so there's nothing else to review.

As liron said, one-click is optimizing the user flow, but allowing easy undo.

It is good UI design:

Optimize the common flow (buy the item) and provide easy undo (from the post-purchase confirmation page, and in the delay before shipping).

But I've still only used it a couple of times - the psychological barrier, wanting to include an add-on item, etc.

You can review everything on the receipt screen and easily undo if you don't like it. This is the same UX as discarding a draft in Gmail - it's done, but you can undo.

I read somewhere that when Bezos told his team to build one click, they came back to him with a 4-click flow. So he told them no, I want one click, and they came back with two clicks (gotta have a confirmation in case that first click was accidental, right?)

So maybe it really was a nontrivial invention for its time.

The nontrivial bit is it starts a timer which allows users to cancel after a click. This works because delivery is far from instant and is fairly insightful, IMO.

> This works because delivery is far from instant

Not quite. They apply the same approach even when delivery is instant; you can order a kindle book, download it, and cancel the order.

Still can't believe Amazon's been around for 20 years now.

I remember "enterprise" IT types kind of turning up their noses at Amazon as "just an online bookstore" back in those days.

I wish I had thought of patenting a half click patent. If a click is a mouse button down and up, how about something 50% more efficient - order immediately on mouse button down? Surely that is non-obvious!

So NZ banned software patents. Does that mean a NZ company that hosted everything outside the US would have been exempt (even if they had a drop shipping market in the US?)

Still can't believe it was 17 years ago!